IKAR in Mass and Industry Media

Russia May Reduce Raw Sugar-Imports Tax in March, IKAR Says

Bloomberg

Jan. 20 (Bloomberg) -- The tax on Russia’s imports of raw sugar may be cut to $50 a metric ton in March from $140 a ton now to help efforts to control inflation, the Institute for Agriculture Market Studies said.

“There are chances that the government can agree on a reduction of the raw-sugar import tax in March instead of May, because the government is very much alarmed by the inflation problem,” Yevgeny Ivanov, an analyst at the Moscow-based researcher, said by phone today. “Prices for vegetables, oil products and other goods and services rose sharply in the last weeks of 2010 and at the beginning of this year.”

Russia’s annual inflation rate accelerated last month to 8.8 percent, the highest in a year, the Federal Statistics Service said Jan. 11.

Under a joint customs agreement with Belarus and Kazakhstan, Russia taxes the imports based on monthly prices in New York trading, with a one-month lag before changes take effect. The tax will remain at $140 a ton in February, the Customs Union Commission, which oversees the tariff, said last week. The duty was at the same level in October, November, December and this month.

The institute, also known as IKAR, forecast raw sugar imports to exceed 200,000 metric tons in January and 120,000 tons in both February and March. Last year, Russia imported 221,120 tons of sugar in January, 47,500 tons in February and 300,380 tons in March, according to IKAR.

28.01.11

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